What Scrub Typhus Actually Is
Orientia tsutsugamushi, the bacterium behind scrub typhus, travels on the larval stage of trombiculid mites, chiggers, that live in tall grass, scrubland, and forest edges across India's northeastern states, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Tamil Nadu, and Odisha. The mite bites, feeds for a few hours, and leaves. The bacterium it deposits invades the cells lining blood vessels. That vascular damage is what makes scrub typhus dangerous and what makes it look, for the first several days, like almost everything else.
